DENVER – In the dank and cramped visitors' locker room this past Monday night in Oakland, knowing full well a television camera was catching every word he said to his team, Broncos coach Mike Shanahan wasted no time.

“I hate the Chargers,” he declared.

Theatrical, trite even, sure it was. But Shanahan and his team really have never had more of a reason than now to despise their AFC West rivals.

With today's game about as important as any Week Two contest could be for the Chargers, they arrive at Invesco Field having dominated the Broncos the past two years.

Four straight Chargers victories in this twice-yearly series is something that had not been done since before any player on either of these teams had been born. Consecutive Chargers victories in Denver had not occurred since 1967-68.

The Chargers come into today's game on the verge of history, having never won three in a row here. The Broncos have not lost three home games in a row to any opponent since Oakland beat them here four straight years from 1974-77.

All the Chargers are thinking about is getting their record even after last week's surprising opening-week loss to Carolina.

“It's very important,” LaDainian Tomlinson said this week. “This is a division game. ... Going 0-2 is not something we can do early on.”

Meanwhile, the Broncos have revenge on their minds.

“They've definitely owned us, at their place and at our place,” Broncos quarterback Jay Cutler told the Denver media this week.

“It's embarrassing what they've done to us,” defensive end Ebenezer Ekuban said to Denver reporters. “We definitely have something to prove. We want to be competitive. This is the NFL; whenever you kick our tails like that, we're definitely going to put forth some extra effort to try to make sure it doesn't happen again.”

The first of the four victories came on a November night here in 2006, wherein the Broncos led 24-7 with 9½ minutes to play in the third quarter before the Chargers scored 28 points in a span of 19 minutes and won 35-27. Three weeks later, Tomlinson scored his NFL-record 29th touchdown that season to punctuate a 48-20 rout in San Diego.

Those two victories pale now on the scale of embarrassment.

Last season, the Broncos did not score a touchdown in the teams' two meetings, falling 41-3 at Invesco in October and 23-3 at Qualcomm Stadium on Christmas Eve. The former was the Broncos' worst home loss in 41 years, the latter featured the infamous incident of Philip Rivers screaming on the sideline in the direction of Cutler.

While both Rivers and Cutler have downplayed that incident and are almost certain to have a friendly on-field chat this morning, Shanahan this week showed his team the clip of Rivers, Matt Wilhelm and Shaun Phillips celebrating on the sideline in the fourth quarter last year, with Rivers screaming toward the Broncos.

The Chargers know the motivated team they will face. Norv Turner pointed out to his team that the Broncos brought in the Dallas Cowboys for a week of practices this August, and that it was no coincidence the Cowboys run the 3-4 defense of former Chargers coordinator Wade Phillips.

The Broncos have not had kind things to say about Rivers since that Dec. 24 game and would love nothing more than to win and end Rivers' undefeated brilliance against them. His 119.8 passer rating is 36 points higher than his rating against the rest of the NFL, and no quarterback who has started more than three games against the Broncos has ever had that high of a rating.

What Rivers did and what happened in San Diego should not be as incensing to the Broncos as what happened in Denver last October.

By the time the Chargers were almost accidentally piling on late in the third quarter, the unthinkable happened at Invesco Field as the rabid Broncos faithful gave up on their booing and simply left.

“I've never seen it like that,” said Vincent Jackson, who went to high school and college in Colorado.

Jackson recalled total silence when he scored late in the third quarter. And by the game's final minute, with Invesco Field almost entirely empty except for those wearing blue and gold, a “Charrr-gers” chant actually could be heard.

“We've embarrassed them,” safety Clinton Hart said. “They've got a chip on their shoulder. It's a big deal. You don't embarrass a team four times.

“Especially coming off a win like they did Monday night, everyone is like Denver, Denver, Denver. They're going to be up for this game.”